Abstract
In recent film studies scholarship, political economy has become increasingly prominent as an approach that enriches our understanding of the multiple dimensions of cinema. Such notable examples as Michael Curtin's Playing to the World's Biggest Audience1 and Darrell William Davis's and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh's East Asian Screen Industries2 clearly demonstrate that cinema is not only an art form and sociocultural discourse, but also part of complex economic networks and activities.3 Among the research that treats cinema primarily as a creative industry, studies of East Asian film productions are flourishing. From these we have learned that martial arts films produced by Asian filmmakers have been finding enthusiastic audiences in the West since Ang Lee's Wo hu cang long/Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) broke box-office records while receiving critical acclaim and winning the Oscar for best foreign language film.4 Two years later, Zhang Yimou's Yingxiong/Hero (2002) also prevailed in both Asian and western markets.5 We are regularly reminded of the transborder pan-Asian initiatives that aim to break Hollywood domination. For example, Media Asia, founded in 1994 with the backing of a substantial multimedia distribution business, created a series of high-profile and high-quality films such as the Wu jian dao/Infernal Affairs trilogy (Wai-Keung Lau and Alan Mak, 2002 and 2003) and Tou wenzi D/Initial D (Wai-Keung Lau and Alan Mak, 2005). The original version of Infernal Affairs was remade by director Martin Scorsese and Hollywood A-listers Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio as the Oscar-winning The Departed (2006).6 Moreover, a Hong Kong-based film company, Applause Pictures, was established in 2000 to explore pan-Asian filmmaking. It also produced many successful projects such as the musical romance Ruguo ai/Perhaps Love (Peter Chan Ho-Sun, 2005) and the historical epic Tou ming zhuang/The Warlords (Peter Chan Ho-Sun and Wai-Man Yip, 2007).7
Published Version
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